Second printing, 1995 (© 1994 Massachusetts Insitute of Tenolgy All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in aay form by any’ tlectronic or mechanical means (nelaing photocopying recording, or information stor age and retrieval) without permission in welling ftom the publisher “This book was printed and bound in the United States of Americ, Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Pubiation Data Classroom lossons : Integrating cognitive theory and classroom practice / edited by Kate McGily. pcm A Bradford book Includes bibliographical references and index, ISBN 0202-19308 1. Learning, Psychology of, 2, Cognitive learning theory 43, Bdueation Experimental methods. L MeGilly, Kate, LBI0s0.c32 1994 370182400 so-t67 cr Classroom Lessons: Integrating Cognitive Theory and Classroom Practice edited by Kate McGilly A Bradford Book ‘The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, EnglandChapter 9 Guided Discovery in a Community of Learners Ann L. Brown and Joseph C. Campione ‘The educational community in America is again facing a time of reform. Dissatisfied with the status quo, many are asking for wide- spread changes in public education. This is not new. Indeed, some have argued that education during the twentieth century has consisted of cycles of reform and retrenchment, with the actual business of schooling remaining largely unchanged (Cohen 1988; Cuban 1984, 1990), Our current program is similar in many ways to earlier reform endeavors, most notably progressive education, discovery learning, and other movements influenced by the work of John Dewey (Cremin 1961; Dewey 1902; Graham 1967). Via a series of gradual steps leading, from the laboratory to the classroom (Brown 1992), we find ourselves involved in a project that resembles the famous six-year experiment mounted by Dewey in the Chicago laboratory school at the turn of the century (Dewey 1894, 1897, 1936; Mayhew and Edwards 1936). We have, in effect, adopted a grade school ‘AS a result, when describing our work, we run up against some pervasive myths surrounding Dewey's laboratory school. We are often. asked how the work differs from Dewey's, and why we think we can succeed where Dewey failed. Few, however, seem to know much about what Dewey actually did, or by what criteria his experiment can be viewed as a failure, Although it is undoubtedly true that our classroom, research shares philosophical underpinnings with Dewey's approach, there are some subtle and not-so-subtle differences (Brown 1992). We ‘will dlustrate this point by considering two articles of Dewey's faith (1902) as received wisdom would have it: discovery learning and the nature of the curriculum. ‘The best-known tenet of Dewey's pedagogical creed (1897) is the concept of “discovery learning.” It is argued that children lean best when discovering for themselves the “verities of life.” This notion has been fully incorporated into constructivist theories of learning. Discovery learning, when successful, has much to recommend it. The230 Brown and Campione motivational benefits of generating and testing one’s own knowledge cannot be underestimated. Discovery learning is often contrasted with didactic instruction, Both methods have their critics. On the one hand, there is considerable evidence that didactic teaching leads to passive learning. But, on the other hand, unguided discovery can be dangerous: children “discov- ering” in our classrooms are quite adept at inventing biological mis- conceptions (Brown 1992; Brown and Campione 1990; Brown and Palincsar 1989a), And, the exact role of the teacher in discovery learn ing classrooms is still largely uncharted. ‘We have argued in favor of a middle ground between didactic teaching and untrammeled discovery learning, that of "guided discov- ery” (Brown 1992; Brown and Palincsar 1989b), where the teacher acts a8 a facilitator, guiding the learning adventures of his or her charges. Guided discovery, however, is difficult to orchestrate. It takes sensitive linical judgment to know when to intervene and when to leave well enough alone. To be successful, the guide must continually engage in online diagnosis of student understanding, and must be sensitive to the current “zone of proximal development” (Vygotsky 1978), the “region of sensitivity to instruction” (Wood and Middleton 1975), the “readiness arena,” or “bandwidth of competence” (Brown 1979; Brown, and Reeve 1987), where students are ripe for new learning. Guided discovery places @ great deal of responsibility in the hands of the teacher, who must model, foster, and guide the “discovery” process into forms of disciplined inquiry that may not be reached without this expert guidance. Dewey was also concerned about the curriculum of public educa~ tion, again an enduring topic of debate (Kliebard 1987). What knowl- edge of enduring value should the child be guided to discover? And should this decision be colored by considerations of age, ability, eth- nicity, ete? Most would agree with Bruner (1969) that knowledge in the form of “lithe and beautiful and immensely generative” ideas should form the basis of any curriculum. immensely generative ideas may be few, and the idea behind education is to point students in the right direction so that they may discover and rediscover these ideas continuously, deepening their understanding in a cyclical fashion Gruner 1969), It is surely unreasonable to expect students to reinvent such generative ideas for themselves, and its the teacher who is called ‘upon to orchestrate this discovery process. In this chapter we will focus primarily on ways of assisting discovery learning within rich content areas. We will also describe our attempts to relieve the de- mands on the official guide, the teacher, by introducing expertise into the system through drawing on a wider community of learners. ‘Guided Discovery in a Community of Learners 231 Brief History of the Project The project that we currently refer to as the “Community of Learners” program, for want of a better name, has its historical roots not in the pedagogy of philosophers such as Dewey, nor in the cyclical reform. ‘movements of educational politics (Cuban 1990; Dow 1991), but in the changes that have occurred in psychological learning theory over the last thirty years, Under the auspices of the so-called cognitive revolu- tion, major changes in psychological learning theory took place, changes that had important implications for educational practice. ‘The cognitive transformation of psychological learning theory led to renewed emphasis on several key ideas. First, although the concept of autodidactic learning (Bateson 1963; Binet 1909; Whitehead 1916) has a long history, it was not until recently that learners have become widely viewed as active constructors of knowledge, rather than pas- sive recipients of others’ expertise. Second, the contemporary ideal learner is imbued with powers of introspection, once verboten. We row recognize that one of the most interesting things about human. learning is that the leamer has knowledge and feelings about it (Tul- ‘ving and Madigan 1970), sometimes even control of it—metacognition sf you will Grown 1975; Flavell and Wellman 1977). Third, we now recognize that humans, although excellent all-purpose learning ma- chines, equipped to leam just about anything by brute force lke all biologically evolved creatures, come predisposed to learn certain things more readily than others (Carey and Gelman 1991), This concentration on active, strategic learning (Brown 1974), with the leamer’s understanding and control (Brown 1975, 1978), following domain-specific trajectories (Brown 1982, 1990; Carey and Gelman 1991; Gallistel, Brown, Carey, Gelman and Keil 1991) had a major influence on our research program in particular and on the gradual shift toward studying learning in educational settings in general. Concomitant with the growing emphasis on active, self-conscious, self-directed learning were far-reaching modifications in what students ‘were required to learn, together with the contexts in which they were asked to learn it. During the 1970s, psychologists began studying the acquisition of expertise within specific domains, gained over long periods of time via concentrated, and often self-motivated, learning (chess for example). More recently, learning, theorists became con- cerned with the acquisition of disciplined bodies of knowledge, char- acteristic of academic subject areas (eg, mathematics, science, computer programming, and even social studies). Learning theories had to change to reflect this shift in emphasis (Glaser and Bassok 1988), Furthermore, psychologists began to broaden their scope and consider282 Brown and Campione input from other branches of cognitive science as well as from learning settings outside the laboratory, or even the classroom walls (Heath and McLaughlin, in press; Lave and Wenger 1991). Reciprocal Teaching ur original move outside the safe haven of the laboratory into class- room learning began with an extended series of studies of reading comprehension. We introduced a procedure, “reciprocal teaching,” that was designed to improve reading in underachieving students (Brown and Palincsar 1982, 198%; Palincsar and Brown 1984). In a typical reciprocal teaching session each participant in a reading group of approximately six members takes a tur leading a discussion. This “learning leader” begins by asking a question about the core content and ends by summarizing the gist of what has been read. Questioning provokes discussion, and summarizing helps students establish where they are in preparation for tackling a new segment of text. On chosen occasions the leader asks for predictions about future content and attempts to clarify any comprehension problems that might arise These key activities of questioning, summarizing, clarifying, and pre- dicting provide the repeatable structure necessary to get a discussion going, a structure that can be faded out when students are more experienced in leading and taking part in discussions Approximately a decade of research has seen significant changes in reciprocal teaching, as illustrated in table 9.1. We began working one- on-one with children who were reading unconnected passages in labo- ratory settings (Brown and Palincsar 1982), progressed to studying children “pulled out” in order to work in groups in resource rooms (Palincsar and Brown 1984), then to considering naturally occurring reading groups in the classroom (Brown and Palincsar 1989b), and finally to studying reading comprehension groups that were fully integrated into science classrooms (Brown and Campione 1990; Brown and Palincsar 1989; Brown, Ash, Rutherford, Nakagawa, Gordon and Campione, in press). We began by concentrating on the few con- strained strategies described above but quickly upped the ante by demanding that students describe the gist of entire texts and put their new knowledge to use via analogical extension and problem solving (Brown, Campione, Reeve, Ferrara, and Palincsar 1991). Next, we be- gan modeling and supporting the development of complex explana- tion, argument, and discussion forms (Brown 1991). Most recently, we have fostered the development of complex reasoning and thought experiments as a method of building new knowledge (Brown et al, in press). Initially we looked at students reading unconnected passages, then proceeded to look at students reading coherent content (Brown Guided Discovery in a Community of Learners 233 Table 91 Evolution of reciprocal teaching (RT) Context Oneomene in Groups in Naturally ‘Work groups Inboratory resource cceuring groups fully integrated setings rooms ‘nelassrooms into scence classroom Activities Summarizing, Gist and Complex ‘Thought questoniong, analogy argument experiments clarifying. structure predicting Materials Unconnected Coherent [Resenchrelated Student assages content resoures prepared use mater Pattern Individual Group Planned RT for Opportunistic ofuse—stategy———dscusson Tearing content wee of RT tring and jigsow teaching Initiation Researcher Retenrcher- Teacher initiated _ Initiate by feetivity initted and teacher with researcher students Initiated guidance cet al,, 1991; Brown and Palincsar 1989a; Palincsar, Brown, and Cam- pione, 1990), We are now observing reading comprehension as it takes place in social groups reading, discussing, and arguing about cohesive ‘material they have prepared themselves. In our current classrooms students appropriate and adapt reciprocal teaching as a tool to en- hance their comprehension. Faced with important material they have difficulty understanding, they call for a reciprocal teaching session to enhance and monitor their learning (Brown et al, in press). Commas of errs in non sent of Tn our current work, reciprocal teaching is only one component o learning community designed to encourage distributed expertise (Brown 1992; Bown ea in press In order to foster such a commit ity, we feature students as designers of their own learning: we en Toueage students to be partially responsible for designing thee own curriculum. In addition to reciprocal teaching, we use a greatly ‘modified version of the jigsaw method (Aronson 1978; Brown etal, in press) of cooperative Teaming. Students are assigned curriculum themes (e.g, changing populations), each divided into approximately five subtopics (eg, extine, endangered artificial, assisted and wrban- ized populations). Students form separate research grops, each 05. signed responsibilty for one ofthe five or so subtopics. These researc groups prepare teaching materials using commercially available, stable234 Brown and Campione computer technology (Campione, Brown and Jay 1992). Then, the students regroup into reciprocal teaching seminars in which each stu- dent is expert in one subtopic, holding one-fifth of the information. Each fifth needs to be combined with the remaining fifths to make a whole unit, hence “jigsaw.” All children in a learning group are expert ‘on one part of the material, teach it to others, and prepare questions for the test that all will take on the complete unit. It is important to note that all children are finally responsible for mastery of the entire theme, not just their fifth of the material. So the burden of teaching others from expertise is ¢ real one, and a mainstay of these classrooms. ‘The Ideal Classroom Working with a group of teachers, and with students at different grade levels', we have evolved a view of the essential features that charac- terize our ideal classroom environment. Because all new teachers are involved from the outset in the organic growth of their versions of the program, versions compatible with our underlying learning principles and their own practices, there is considerable variability in different classes, But there is also constancy at the level of underlying principles, ‘Together with the teachers we have settled on several characteristics of successful classrooms that must be operating for the program to be judged in place. These essential characteristics are Individual Responsibility Coupled with Communal Sharing. Students and teachers each have “ownership” of certain forms of expertise, but no one has it all. Responsible members of the community share the ex: pertise they have or take responsibility for finding out about needed knowledge. Through a variety of interactive formats, the groups un- cover and delineate aspects of knowledge “possessed” by no one individual. Expertise is distributed deliberately through the jigsaw and reciprocal teaching collaborative learning activities that ensure stu- dents learn complementary material and can thus teach from strength. [Expertise is also distribuited by happenstance; variability in expertise arises naturally within these classrooms (Brown et al,, in press). We refer to this phenomenon as “majoring.” Children are free to major in a variety of ways, free to learn and teach whatever they like within the confines of the selected topic. Children select topics of interest to bbe associated with: some become resident experts on DDT and pesti- cides; some specialize in disease and contagion; younger children often adopt a particular endangered species (pandas, otters, and whales being popular). Within the community of the classroom, these varieties of experts ave implicitly recognized, although not the subject oF much tall (Guided Discovery in a Community of Learners 235 Subcultures of expertise develop: varieties of expertise are recog- nized by the pattern of help seeking and the role students assume in small and whole class discussions. In these discussions, the class defers to expert children in both verbal and nonverbal ways. Status in dis- cussions does not reside “in” the individual child, however, as in the case of established leaders and followers, but is a transient phenome- non that depends on a child's perceived expertise within the domain of discourse. As the domain of discourse changes, so, too, do the students receiving deferential treatment, Itis very much our intention to increase diversity in these classrooms. ‘Traditional school practices have aimed at just the opposite, decreasing diversity, a traditional practice based on several assumptions: that there exist prototypical, normal students, that, at a certain age, they can do a certain amount of work or grasp a certain amount of material, and that they can do so in the same amount of time (Becker 1972). Now these are strong assumptions! They must serve a powerful ad~ ministrative function (Cuban 1984), for there is little that we know about leaming and development that would support them. So al- though we must aim at conformity on the basics, everyone must read eventually, we must also aim at increasing diversity of expertise and interests so that members of the community can benefit from the increasing richness of knowledge available. The essence of teamwork is pooling, varieties of expertise. Teams composed of members with homogeneous ideas and skills are denied access to such diversity Ritu FayliarParicipnt Strate, Principal. pastipaton frame: tronks (Goodwin 1987) re few and are practiced repeatedly, One Common cso ot fer he student dived io thee pe comping on the computers one conducting research via Frranly of media, and the lst he fetaining cen) interacting ta the teacher i some way editing manus dscussing pro- frets oF soceving some other frm of teacher attention. A. second pete ame for te cas fo engage in reciprocal teaching re teeschsernars ose tenching activites, with approximately fve sctennchy teaching greups in simultaneous sessions. Another activity “crosstalk,” was introduced by the students. In crosstalk, students ft ‘vavtous research groupe periodically report In about thee Petbsee to date, and students from other working groups ask que EOBGF caeson or extension. The various groups thereby tk oe scape and provide comprehenson check (eachother. And the anaPictty atures the dasroom tachey o an outside expert iacting-a benetonark lesson, modeling thinking skis and sel Shetien tzocucing new information, sessing higher-order rela236 Brown and Campione tionships or encouraging the class to poo! their expertise in a novel conceptualization ofthe topic. The repetitive, indeed, ritualistic nature of these activities is an essential aspect of the classroom, for it enables children to make the transition from one participant structure (Erick: son and Shultz 1977) o another quickly and effortlessly. As soon as students recognize a participant structure, they understand the role expected of them. Thus, although there is room for individual agendas and discovery in these classrooms, they are highly structured to permit students and teachers to navigate between repetitive activities as ef fortlessly as possible A Community of Discourse. It is essential that a community of dis- course (Fish 1960) be established early in which constructive discus- sion, questioning, and criticism are the mode rather than the exception. Speech activities involving increasingly scientific modes of thinking, such as conjecture, speculation, evidence, and proof become part of the common voice of the community; conjecture and proofs are them- selves open to negotiation in multiple ways (Bloor 1991) as the ele- ‘ments that compose them, such as terms and definitions, are renegotiated continuously. Suecessful enculturation into the commu: nity leads participants to recognize the difference between, and the appropriate place of, everyday versions of speech activities having to do with the physical and natural world and the discipline-embedded special versions of these activities (O'Connor 1991). ‘Multiple Zones of Proximal Development. Theoretically, we conceive of the classroom as comprised of multiple zones of proximal develop- ment (Vygotsky 1978) through which participants can navigate via different routes and at different rates (Brown and Reeve 1987). A zone of proximal development can include people, adults and children with varying expertise, but it can also inchude artifacts such as books, vid- 0s, wall displays, scientific equipment, and a computer environment intended to support intentional learning (Seardamalia and Bereiter 1991). The zone of proximal development defines the distance between current levels of comprehension and levels that can be accomplished in collaboration with other people or powerful artifacts. It embodies a concept of readiness to learn that emphasizes upper, rather than lower, levels of competence, boundaries that are not immutable, but rather constantly changing as the learner becomes increasingly independent at successively more advanced levels. Seeding, Migration, and Appropriation of Ideas. In our classroom, teach- ers and students create zones of proximal development by seeding the environment with ideas and concepts they value and by harvesting those which “take” in the community. Ideas seeded by community (Guided Discovery in a Community of Leamers 237 ‘members migrate to other participants and persist over time. Partci- pants in the classroom are free to appropriate vocabulary, ideas, meth- ods, ete, that appear intially as part ofthe shared discourse, and by appropriation, transform these ideas via personal interpretation, Ideas that are part of the common discourse are not necessarily appropriated by all, or in the same manner by everyone. Because the appropriation of ideas and activities is multidirectional, we use the term mutual appropriation (Moschkovich 1989; Newman, Griffin and Cole 1989; Schoenfeld, Smith and Arcav, in press) ‘Matual appropriation refers tothe bidirectional nature ofthe appro- ppriation process, one that should not be viewed as limited to the process by which the child (novice) ears from the adult (expert) via a static process of imitation, internalizing observed behaviors in an untransformed manner. Rather, learners ofall ages and levels of ex- pertise and interests seed the environment with ideas and knowledge that are appropriated by different learners at diferent rates, according, to their needs and to the current state ofthe zones of proximal devel- ‘opment in which they are engaged. The Nature of the Curriculum ‘The Intended Curriculum ‘Although there is considerable room for discovery and individual ‘majoring in these classrooms, we intentionally engineer the curriculum in certain ways. The teacher's role here is complex. Teachers must see that curriculum content is "discovered," understood, and transmitted efficiently and at the same time she must recognize and encourage students’ independent majoring attempts. But what is the place of a set curriculum in discovery classrooms? True, it would be possible to allow the students to discover on their own, charting their own course of studies, exploring at will, but, in order to be responsive to the course requirements of normal schools, we believe it necessary to set bounds (on the curriculum to be covered. In general, our approach is to select ‘enduring themes for discussion and to revisit them often, each time at an increasingly mature level of understanding. For example, in biology ‘we concentrate on interdependence and adaptation. ; ‘Changes in the curriculum occur over time because individual par- ticipating teachers help to design the actual expression of the main “units, and the students themselves are allowed some freedom to nomi- nate subunits for study, subunits constrained by a given theme. For ‘example, the classroom teacher and the resident biologist select a unit theme, such as endangered species. The class meets for whole class sessions where they discuss what they already know and what they238 Brown and Campione THREE ITERATIONS OF THE SAME UNIT CHANGING POPULATIONS Teacher and_student-generated subtopics School 1 School 2 ‘School 3 ‘Urban Urban Disease Extinct Extinct Mating Assisted Rebounding Assisted Endangered Endangered Habitat destruction Domestic Disasters Hunting Introduced speciee Accidents Introduced speci THE EVOLUTION OF A LEARNING CYCLE Mechanism #8 topic ‘Mechanism folded In + photosynthesis | je itterent wave raln forest ergy exchange grassiands + competition oceans + consumers fresh water redwood forest + decomposition Figure 9.41 Changes in the cucu of de svg cases op) end two seventh grade clases (bottom) asthe eto eacher td stent nts vers Guided Discovery ina Community of Leamers 239 ‘want to find out. Questions thus generated are written on Post-ts™, and placed on a bulletin board. Students then browse through a few highly selected books and generate more questions. Finally, the ques- tions are grouped into subthemes and identified as the subunits. Thus, although there is a great deal of similarity across groups in the subunits, students feel ownership and volunteerism in what they se- lect for study. The top half of figure 9.1 shows the variation in subthe- ‘mes that three separate sixth grade classes helped generate under the unit, changing populations. Similarly, teachers differed in how they orchestrated the study of units, partially in response to their own preferences and partially in response to sitident interest. The bottom half of figure 9.1 shows two different approaches to studying the food chain. In one case the focus ‘was on mechanism; in the other on habitats and ecosystems. In the “Mechanism as Topic” class, students were led to consider different habitats as they concentrated on photosynthesis and energy exchange Correspondingly, in the "Mechanism Folded Inv class, those specializ- ing in individual habitats were led to consider the basic mechanisms (photosynthesis, energy exchange, etc.) as they endeavored to under- stand their habitats (Ash and Brown 1993) ‘Under the general umbrella of the themes and subunits, students are introduced to some critical underlying notions. Grade school chil- dren become increasingly interested in’ cross-cutting themes that ‘would form the basis of an understanding of such principles as meta~ bolic rate, reproduction strategies, and hibernation as a survival strat- egy, although at a very elementary level. For example, a member of a group studying elephants became fixated on the amount of food con- sumed by his animal and subsequently by other animals studied in the classroom, notably the panda and the sea otter. Although relatively small, the sea otter consumes vast quantities of food because “it doesn’t have blubber, and living in a cold sea, it needs food for energy to keep warm.” When an adult observer mentioned the similar case ofthe hummingbird’s need for a great deal of food, this student caught fon to something akin to the notion of metabolic rate, a concept he introduced in all subsequent discussions. The notion of metabolic rate, seeded by one student, quickly migrated throughout the classroom, was appropriated by many, came to form part of the common dis- course, and eventually made its way into the class book on endan- gered species. ‘As a further example, a group of gitls studying whales became interested in fertility rates and the fate of low-birth-weight babies. They discovered that one reason that certain species of whales are endangered is that their reproduction rate has slowed dramatically.240 Brown and Campione ‘The same was found to be true of sea otters. These students introduced the concept of declining fertility rates into the discussion, and it was taken up in the common discourse in two forms: simply, asthe notion of the number of babies a species had, and more complexly, as the notion of reproductive strategies in general. The skilled teacher appro- priates students’ spontaneous interest in the common problems of endangered animals—amount of food eaten, amount of land required, umber of young, and so on—and encourages them to consider the deeper general principles of metabolic rate, and survival and repro- Guctive strategies. ‘The Unintended Curriculum Because students are free to direct their research efforts broadly, each ‘group of students develops an idiosyncratic set of concerns in which they choose to major. We will trace one set of issues that occupied a mixed fifth and sixth grade class (1992-93) for an entire semester: the spread of disease by mosquitoes. ‘The entry activity for a unit on endangered species, the anchoring events if you will Gransford, Sherwood, Hasselbring, Kinzer, and Williams 1990), was a whole-class treatment of two pieces of literature: ‘an expository text, Saving the Peregrine Falcon” by Caroline Arnold, and a play, “The Day They Parachuted Cats into Borneo” by Charlotte Pomerantz. The students used reciprocal teaching to help them under- stand the endangered status of the peregrine falcon and the role of DDT in contributing to it. Simultaneously, we capitalized on the stu- dents’ skills of dramatic play and art by having them enact and illus- trate the play—which essentially describes the disruption in a food chain brought about by the introduction of DDT to eradicate mosqui- toes. Through sociodramatic play (Heath 1991), the students were led to consider a biological theme that required deep understanding, Shortly after these activities, an important idea was seeded by a student on “parents’ night” a meeting where the students introduced their parents to the participant structures of the project. Students were, in effect, the teachers, while the adults were the students. The discus sion centered around the use of DDT and other chemicals in combating ‘malaria. One extremely confident student teacher informed the group that, like malaria, AIDS can be spread by mosquitoes, No one in the group argued with this statement, One of the authors (Brown), also in the group, then attempted to squash this spread of misinformation by arguing that this was not so. Challenged for her evidence by the student, she could manage only a feeble, “I saw it on television,” the type of evidence justifiably impermissible in these classrooms. In the ensuing discussion, the child theorist clearly won the day by Guided Discovery in a Community of Leamers 241 recourse to analogy and theory, “I's the same as with needles, infected blood gets into the needles and then spreads AIDS to another user— mosquitoes bite an infected host and then bite a healthy person—the blood commingles.” Even his language was technical and impressive. This young theorist also made recourse to epidemiological data by anguing thatthe incidence of AIDS is higher in places where there are ‘more mosquitoes, such as Florida and Africa. And tocap his argument, he introduced a little conspiracy theory, namely, that the CIA knows all about this but is repressing the evidence. ‘The next event followed immediately after parent night. The student theorist and the adult biologist called the San Francisco AIDS Hotline to find out whether, indeed, AIDS could be spread by mosquitoes. As it tums out, this is the third most frequently raised question for the hotline. The hotline operator answered from a crib sheet replete with deep biological terminology that neither the student/teacher interro- gators, nor the hotline respondent, fully understood. The information received from the hotline was as follows (from biologist Doris Ash's field notes): AIDS and Malaria are completely different in the way they are transmitted. The malaria Plasmodium parasite needs to live in the mosquito in order to complete its life cycle, and it has a very complex life cycle involving two hosts, a human and a mosquito. This is not true of AIDS. ‘Where arthropod vectors (carriers, such as mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, etc) are concerned, the parasite that causes the disease needs to both increase its numbers within the vector and also exit from it efficiently. This is true for malaria, but itis not true for the AIDS virus With malaria, the parasites multiply, then concentrate in the salivary glands, When the mosquito injects the next victim, the parasites pass into the victim’s blood. No such model exists for AIDS. ‘During the decade that AIDS has been multiplying in the USA, researchers have been unable to locate multiplying HIV in mos- quitoes and other anthropods, nor have they observed the virus in a place where they can exit the arthropod host. Tt should be noted that the mosquito does not inject blood into ‘umang; it only sucks blood out of them. It does inject fluid from its salivary glands, Since the Plasmodium lives throughout the mosquito digestive system and migrates to the salivary glands, the Plasmodium parasite is injected into humans by carrier mos- quitoes. To date, no animal intermediary has been identified with AIDS transmission.242 Brown and Campione ‘Taie 92 Seeding, migration, and appropriation of biological tples over semester ofstuctent- Aircted inquiry Student questions ‘Bring up issues) Do lage amounts of DDT depress immune function? I human bas malaria can it be transmited?—Can a baby get it inside the ody? ‘What sbout babies outed the body? In paces in Africa with Its of malaria, there ‘more AIDS? ‘Does plasmodium need mosquitoes to repreduce? Does AIDS neod! mosquitoes? [they ext warm bloed, why aren't they warm blooded? ‘This sa clarification question. How does plasmodiam adapt to warm biood? ‘Do mosquitoes have cold or warm blood? ‘Mosquito suck blood out, spits saliva in? Does plasmadium go into the placenta? 1a child has i and t grows does the malasia, _get stronger and stronger? fa mother bresst feed baby, ca it gett? Do mosquitoes pas malaria on to young, or fare they boen with ‘What started 2 Why did ice age il tke dinosaurs? Tn Kenyo, people who have ickle-ell anemia don't get malasia as muck? Red blocd cesar usualy round If you have sickling, your blood elle ace lke a sickle. How do you get side cel? Tmmunity ad resistance Holoendemic as vs. areas of new infection. ‘Areas of endemic disease = high immunity Immunity psse on to fetus Te fist time infection, fetus at high tisk Alter Intl six month immunity, flildren Tot at high rsk, Some cildren survive repeated bouts and develop immunity. The nation of vacelnation. Epidemiological question: Answer ‘Transmission mechanism. Answer is no ‘Warm: ve. cold-boodedness actors about blood eloting. ‘Tansmisson mechanism. Bloogial magnification Low possibility of AIDS sprend ‘through Beast milk. Chicken egg problems. Malaria sound since recorded histor ‘Mutation, drugeesstant strains Discussion of sickle-cell anemia a 1 protective facto. Ske cell nein. ed blood cll Hemogibin Genetic transmission, recessive ‘genes Guided Discovery in a Community of Learners 243 “Table 92 (continued ‘We heard that plasmodium eats whats called Discusion of hemoglobin bhemo... hemoglobin. What's hemoglobin? Oxygen lack, Fever Weekening ‘Shape of blood cell Brain/oxygen relation. Ravaged blood calls clog the capillaries, deprive the brain of oxygen? Why do babies dle within afew hours of setting i How do you gt sickle cll I it in genes? ‘Blood oxygen/brain relations. Genetic transnisson. Genetic counseling Genes, Nucleus te Beginnings of DNA and gene altering Experiments with mosquitoes ingesting blood containing HIV indicate that they are not carriers, and epidemiological studies of AIDS-infected areas with mosquitoes do not indicate higher rates of AIDS than AIDS-infected areas without mosquitoes. ff mosqui- toes carried AIDS, for example, African children would have it in the same proportion as adults, but this is not the case. Since these children play outside and receive repeated bites, they ‘would be expected to have AIDS if mosquitoes were carriers. However, this is not the case. In areas where there are both mosquitoes and AIDS, the incidence of AIDS is lower in children and adults over 60. ‘AIDS is transmitted most easily through direct transfer of blood or via vaginal and seminal body fluids. It is least likely to be spread via saliva. A human would need a large quantity of infected saliva in order to be in danger of transmission. To date, there are no proven cases of AIDS transmission via saliva. [Distillation of AIDS Hotline information, from Ash and Brown 1993, and work in progress] Complex ideas indeed, but this was the starting point that fueled fa semester of sustained inquiry, highlights of which are featured in table 9.2. ‘We do not have space to detail the natural history of these ideas in the conventional way. Small-group and whole-group discussions, writ- ten documents, and so forth are too extensive for inclusive. Instead in table 9.2, we trace the student questions (in approximately verbatim form) and the biological issues that the questions led them to discuss. ‘These are but a few of the questions raised by students in their search244 Brown and Campione for deeper understanding of an issue of general concern, the spread of AIDS. ‘The discussion of sickle-cell anemia was introduced by a student knowledgeable about the topic, as she had sickle-cell anemia herself. Si: How do you get i? ‘52; Sometimes it’s in the genes. My mother gave it to me, 3: Like if you kiss her? ‘4: No, it’s like in your genes, like you great grandmother could have had it. Like you were in your mother’s womb, you would have gotten it. 52: No, before that, in the genes. S4: What are genes? 56: Like what is in the blood. Like N’s parents are really tall, so sshe is really tall. My mother has brown hait, so I have brown hai $7: Genes are little things that are inside the nucleus which controls the cell. It depends—like what kind of cell itis and how it responds. Nucleus is like a little brain. Genes live inside the nucleus when the sperm and egg are forming one cell—then they reproduce the genes [pause] we better look this up again to get clear ‘The discussion on the role of hemoglobin was motivated by both the sickle-cell anemia discussion and by a Newsweek article, "The Endless Plague” (anwary 11, 1993), brought in by a student, The Diologist reported that in twenty years of teaching at all levels includ- ing college, this was the first time she had taught about hemoglobin to students who had a reason for wanting to know! Success of the Program Knowledge Building ‘We will concentrate first on the acquisition of biological knowledge. In short, did the students learn anything? And how would we know if they did? We use an extensive battery of static and dynamic pretest and posttest measures as well as on-line indices of conceptual change. ‘We augment pretest and posttest scores by the use of portfolios and. student products. The database is extremely rich, and we will concen- trate in this chapter on the more traditional pretest/posttest tasks and extension activities of knowledge utilization. All students receive short-answer quizzes on the entire theme before and after each unit, Half of the items are generated by the student Guided Discovery in a Communty of Learners 245 KNOWLEDGE TEST, UNIT | KNOWLEDGE TEST, UNIT II RESEARCH Peon ROC. nour nour KNOWLEDGE TEST, UNIT Il ‘scone wT RESEARCH oom ROG onan Figur 92 ul of ni conten owe tas In fh aes grad ful. inerverin Font = pt conte group, ho were densi the fit semester Ct Dy the taught by thei repulse Gaestom teacher ROC = a read-only control group that rend the key materi bu did rot esearch. research teams and half by our staff. The results of shortanswer quizzes for one full-year intervention with fifth and sixth graders are shown in figure 92. Students in the research classes were compared ‘with those in a partial control group (PCont) treated exactly the same as the research classes for the first semester (unit 1), and then taught environmental science by their regular science teacher. The partial control group had exactly the same access to books, videos, computers, land 50 forth, as the zesearch classes. As figure 9.2 shows, the two246 Brown and Campione groups did not differ from each other on unit 1, where they were, in effect, both research groups, treated exactly the same; but the children in the research classrooms outperformed the partial control group on both units 2 and 3. A read-only control (ROC) group, who read the key materials but did no research performed poorly throughout. These “quick assessments” given to all students assure us that domain-spe- cific content is retained better by students in the research classrooms. Clinical interview. ‘The next question is, can the students use the in- formation flexibly? Students differ in their level of understanding and in the confidence with which they hold opinions. To test this we have developed a clinical interview (Ash and Brown 1993) consisting of a series of questions designed to be sensitive to the bandwidth of com- petence within which each individual student can navigate (Brown and Reeve 1987). To map the window of opportunity for learning, the interviewer raises a series of key questions, fist eliciting basic exposi- tory information—for example, what does the student know about the food chain? If the student cannot answer, the interviewer provides hints and examples as necessary to test the student's reaciness to learn that concept. If however, the student seems initially knowledgeable, the interviewer questions the stability of that understanding by intro- ducing counterexamples to the student's beliefs (“Is a mushroom a plant?” "What about yeast?”) and, if appropriate, asks the student to ‘engage in thought experiments that demand novel uses of the infor- ‘mation. For example, a student who has sorted pictures into herbi vores and carnivores, and justified the choices, may be asked, “What would happen on the African plain if there were no gazelles or other meat for cheetahs fo eat? Could they eat grain?” Some students are surprisingly uncertain about this, suggesting that cheetahs could eat grain under certain circumstances, although they would not live hap- pily. Some even entertain a critical-period hypothesis—that the chee- tah could change if it were forced to eat grain from infancy, but once it reached adolescence, it would be too set in its ways to change. Only a few invoked notions of form and function, such as properties of the digestive tract, to support the assertion that cheetahs could not change within their lifespan. In figure 93 we see one student’s pre- and Posttest attempts to negotiate such a thought experiment, These exten- sion activities of thought experiments and counterexamples are far ‘more revealing of the current state of students’ knowledge than their first unchallenged answers Critical Thinking about Content. We see the same benefit of being in the research classroom on novel application questions, such as “Design. ‘an animal to fit the following habitat” (desert, tundra, or rain forest) Guided Discovery in a Community of Learners 247 THouGHT EXPERIMENT ‘Question: Coulda cheatah change Wor a meat diet to a vegetable diet and survive? stintoniow ‘8: ..wolltmeanitpeopie can, | | ike are vogetarans, | moan thini'a cheetah could change when asked how this might happen: St Woll uso switch of but cheetah des. tum, wauld be easier ortho to change on When asked the baby cheetah wel be re isaac aah poets ey student asserted that they woul |. seco at ey ‘me to eat, but for them there Probably be th Teaeet ee rer et cate ele meg mune; ter | [oan ahaha a — /might be able to eat meat if there were no longer gras, ne nowy baby noon oeat grass jawer wih abroad smile arc S: Well ft was baby, it would be easier bocausa I could eat | |S: Nicoty the digestive track 1 would be Hight tere, ofthe desis too Somplcate would et nave ro walk tle {nd also the teaty wauidet be Brito gor ablo fo grind meat. Agure93 "Thought experiment from a sath grader showing changes in reasoning ‘or “Design an animal of the future.” ‘The sixth graders in the research dlassroom outperform control students in the number of biologically appropriate mechanisms they include in their designs (such as mecha- nisms of defense, reproductive strategies, etc.). Over time the research, students introduce more novel variations of taught principles along, with more truly novel ideas as can be seen in figure 9.4. For example, the class had discussed the notion of mimicry as a defense mechanism, Ina response-scored taught/novel, one student said that the eggs of hhis animal were placed in a line and the markings made the eggs look like a “full grown cobra,” a novel use of the mimicry principle. An- other student incorporated the notion of behavioral mimicry that had248 Brown and Campione Use of Biological Principles: Habitat Task Design an Animal Version (6th Grade) 50 EXPERIMENTAL, conTRoL NUMBER OF PRINCIPLES PER PROBLEM Figure 94 Pre- and posttest scores on a transfer tests Design an animal to ft «abit not been taught, still another introduced the concept of a predator's {injecting a poison to which it was itself immune, so that the predator could safely devour the stunned prey. Responses to clinical interviews, “what if” thought experiments, and analogy and transfer tests tell us a great deal about the status of the child’s accumulating knowledge and ability to reason on the basis of incomplete knowledge. We regard them as fruitful avenues for pro- ‘moting and evaluating students’ ability to think critically about knowl- edge, an antidote to the stockpiling of passive, inert knowledge (White head 1916). Reading Although billed as a science curriculum, the program of research is very much an extension of the original reading comprehension work that began with reciprocal teaching (Palinesar and Brown 1984), Our main “transfer” data, therefore, take the form of: (1) improvement in students’ reading comprehension scores on materials outside the do- main of study and (2) gradual acquisition of increasingly complex Guided Discovery in a Community of Learners 249 ‘Comprehension Measures PROPORTION CORRECT Reseaten” Poot ATC nour PROPORTION CORRECT ‘QUESTION TYPES. gure 95 Reading comprehension measure in domain outside biology: PCont = partis! contrat group a3 in figure 92. RTC = a reciprocal teaching control group. ROC = read-only ‘ont. forms of argumentation and explanation strategies. We will limit our- selves here to a few representative samples. ‘We begin with an example of fifth and sixth graders’ performance on crterion-referenced tests of reading comprehension. The data are from a full-year study, where we worked with approximately ninety students (Brown and Campione 1990). At the beginning and end of